Blaise Tapp: Watching my daughter revise made me realise something...
There are moments in life when you are forced to sit down and ask yourself ‘how on earth did that happen?’
I’ve recently experienced one of those moments, when the eldest Tapp child sat down next to me at the kitchen table-cum-makeshift office desk to do her GCSE revision. GCSEs! My child? How?
When you live your days like you’re wearing rocket powered roller skates, it’s easy to forget where you’re at in life. I often conveniently forget that I’m closer to 70 than I am to 25, especially when I’m making a prized prat of myself on a dancefloor or trying to match sockless young ‘uns drink for drink on my increasingly rare forays into town for a night out.
So, for someone who remembers the summer of 1993 and my own exam ordeal like it was yesterday, having a child who is knocking on the door of her 16th birthday and getting ready to embark on her further education journey is sobering to say the least.
Like all parents with a vivid recollection of their teens, watching my own flesh and blood prepare for such an important life moment can be hairy to say the least, especially when I think back to my own haphazard approach to revision.
Fortunately, our lass has adopted her mother’s approach to formal education and appears to be taking it far more seriously than her Old Man ever did. In many ways, results are immaterial when you see your child put genuine effort into something genuinely important because you are filled with real excitement about what the future holds for them. It’s then you start thinking about what comes next.
While I’m not one of those nauseating types who lives their life vicariously through their offspring, I’m readying myself for the next stage of life when parenting, in theory, should become that little bit more straightforward and I get to play the wise old owl who offers advice rather than constantly asking for the dishwasher to be emptied.
Although I might be getting ahead of myself with dreams of the housework becoming a family affair, I do feel that I’m ready embark on the next stage of my own life – adulthood proper.
I no longer fear getting older and am beginning to understand my place in the world, a realisation that has taken me nearly half a century to achieve. It’s taken a landmark such as my daughter getting ready for her exams to do it, but I think I’m finally starting to grow up.